The Empty Void
by AsteriaLumina
Summary: "There's love in our bodies and it holds us together, but pulls us apart when we're holding each other. We all want something to hold in the night, we don't care if it hurts or we're holding too tight." Ten years of marriage is in danger as tragedy strikes. Astoria is a shell of the woman she once was and Draco is a wreck as he watches his wife slowly wither away. Drastoria angst.


**A/N:** Just a short one-shot piece that suddenly came to mind to me today. It's my first ever angst, so I hope that it's okay. Let me know what you think! And I recommend the song quoted below, it's just… amazing. I might do a songfic off of it! Enjoy and please review!

Draco is 30 and Astoria is 28 in this piece.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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**The Empty Void**

_There is love in our bodies and it holds us together  
But pulls apart when we're holding each other  
We all want something to hold in the night  
We don't care if it hurts or we're holding too tight _

– _Hardest of Hearts by Florence + the Machine_

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Astoria tightly held onto her husband's cold hand as she watched the tiny, ornate coffin become covered with hard soil, and she could feel the pitying glances that were directed her way. Her veil masked her tears, but her shoulders betrayed her, shaking with silent cries of anguish. It was their third one in the last few years, and perhaps the final. Draco held back a strangled sob as his eyes took in the little headstone, engraved with the words Baby Malfoy. The beautiful little boy was gone before his hopeful young parents could even bestow a name upon him, gone to join Lyra, Hyperion and Scorpius in that beautiful place far from the darkness of the starkly cruel world. His mother only had a chance to look into his perfect, cherubic face and gently touch the wisps of silvery-blonde hair before the angelic child they created was taken away, never to return to her arms again.

Draco thought of all their lost children as he stood there with the love of his life, watching as the coffin was buried in the family plot. Lyra, their beautiful girl with her dark locks

Their marriage was crumbling from the inside out, with each passing day being yet another catalyst to the progressing tension between the Malfoys. Ten years of marriage and the fire with which Draco loved his once vibrant Astoria was slowly dying out, the embers precariously balancing between being snuffed out or rekindled. He was rarely ever at home, opting to immerse himself into his work with fervor to avoid returning to the silent manor until he absolutely had to. Draco felt remorseful for leaving Astoria in that hauntingly oppressive house all day, but he couldn't stand to see her in such a state. He hated to see her red-rimmed eyes that clearly told him she had been crying, her thinning cheeks and the lifeless way she held herself. It hurt him, finding her sitting on the floor of their bedroom, clutching a tiny pair of socks or one of their children's birth papers, the death certificates discarded elsewhere in the room.

It was an unexplainable thing, why she seemed to be incapable of giving life to perfectly healthy children. The most prestigious Healers of Britain, France, and even America had all deemed Astoria as perfectly healthy, in her prime. Yet an unfortunate situation befelled each of their children.

Mrs. Malfoy spent her days wandering the vast manor, aimlessly drifting into the achingly empty nursery, large blue eyes clouded over with immeasurable despair and sadness as her papery hands gently ran over the stiffly folded baby blankets and adjusted the toys that Draco had bought in the hopes of playing with their baby. The room was like a reminder of what they'd lost, yet the couple did not have the heart to destroy it. Her perfect features were a blank mask of nothingness, her rosebud lips set into a forever-grim line and large eyes betraying a pain that couldn't be described. They would never hear that first word and argue over who the favorite parent was, nor see the first step their child took.

Only Draco and her house-elf knew of the ghastly dark shadows under her eyes, concealed by a layer of fine powder that was meticulously applied every morning and washed away with silent tears every night. He could hardly remember what her smile looked like, and the light in her eyes had long faded into a dull reflection of pain. From the moment her head touched the plush pillow until the first chirp of a songbird outside the wide windows, the resigned young woman's sleep was plagued with nightmares and cold sweat, each night the same as the last. The night terrors grew increasingly alarming, and she began to fear closing her eyes.

Draco could see the sadness slowly drain his wife as he got into bed beside her fitfully sleeping form each night and kissed her thin cheek with unshed tears in his silvery eyes. He would tenderly entwine her fingers with his and whisper to her, telling her how much he loved her and how badly he wanted to see her smile again. The heartbreak chipped at their marriage, and most days, they hardly spoke. They were lost to each other. As much as Astoria missed him, she didn't know what to say any longer, despising herself for not being able to give him a single living child, believing she was slowly losing him.

Some nights, he would watch over her, making sure to save her from the depths of her nightmares.

"I love you, Stori," he would whisper, brushing her damp curls from her forehead and trailing his fingers down her porcelain cheek, "And I'm always going to. Please just come back to me." He would plead with her and feel his heart wrench violently as he watched the moisture gather under her dark lashes and trail down the side of her face, knowing she could hear him and how much it shattered her heart.

Other nights, the prematurely aged young man retreated to his study with a glass of firewhiskey in one hand, letting the alcohol dull his ache just for a while. His sobs would burst forth with just one glance at the wedding portrait that hung on one wall, her lively smile lighting up her beautiful features. Another glance at what was meant to be a family portrait but only featured the pair of them added salt to the wound, as he could see the slight changes where children had been painted out of the portrait. The firewhiskey couldn't ease the impact of seeing her waif-like form standing in the doorway watching with pure heartbreak on her face before turning and silently drifting back down the hall.

Then, there were the nights where they held each other as if the other was a lifeline, silently taking comfort in the touch and the closeness. And he would hold her close, kissing her hair as her petite body wracked with trembling cries, letting her small hand hit him as he swallowed his own tears in order to give her release.

Draco wanted to comfort her, to assure her and he didn't want to believe she was lost to him. He knew she blamed him for his absence, silently accepting how he dealt with their situation, and he knew he was a fool. Someday, he thought, Astoria would come back to him. Not as a desolate shell of a girl with an empty void, but as that ray of light in his llfe that nothing could replace.

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**Additional:**

Scorpius was the first-born and was lost when he was three. Lyra was almost two when she was lost, and Hyperion was 6 months old. I might embark on a longer story about _why _Astoria's children are unable to survive for long, but I'm still developing the idea of a curse placed on the Greengrass bloodline that caused it, and how it could be overturned.


End file.
